Welcome to the Good Funeral Guide
The Good Funeral Guide is an independent, not-for-profit consumer advice and advocacy service. We are here to help you arrange the funeral you want.
The Good Funeral Guide is for people
- who need to arrange a funeral for someone now
- who want to make future arrangements for their own funeral
- who’d like to learn about death and funerals
What the Good Funeral Guide does
Most of us ‘buy’ no more than 2 funerals in a lifetime and rarely give much thought to them in between — beyond reflecting that they seem rather expensive. So we’re not very good at it, and for very good reasons. Not only are we unskilled, we also have a great deal on our minds. Grief can make a person vulnerable and distracted.
But buying a funeral is the same as buying anything else, it’s a commercial transaction, and we wouldn’t dream of buying a car, a fridge, a television, a builder, without doing our homework first. The more we know, the better we can choose — and avoid getting upsold or ripped off.
The Good Funeral Guide is designed to inform you speedily and efficiently. It will empower you to make informed decisions. It will show you where you can save money and avoid unnecessary expense. It will enable you to play your part as you wish and create a funeral you will be proud of. It will enable you to:
- decide how the body of the person who has died will be cared for and who will do it
- make informed choices about products and services
- get best value for money
- read reviews of best funeral directors
- create a meaningful and memorable funeral ceremony
- create an end-of-life plan
- acquire some background information about death and dying, and find out where to learn more.
What the Good Funeral Guide does not do
The Good Funeral Guide does not take a campaigning stance on any issue, preferring to set out facts dispassionately (sometimes ambivalently), and allow you to make your own choices according to your own values.
The guide does not reproduce information already widely available on subjects like registering the death, what coroners do, probate and other administrative and financial matters. It does, though, give you signposts to where you can find out more about them. The guide also recommends books which it wishes neither to upstage or compete with. There are links to these, too.
The information in the Good Funeral Guide is written in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way which is not designed to be insensitive. On the contrary, it does not presume to address how you may be feeling.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us. What do you need to know? Have you any questions about funerals you would like to ask us? Would you like us to help you find a good funeral director? We don’t charge for advice.
Do you have a good funeral experience to share? Or a bad one?
Is there a particularly good or an especially bad funeral director you would like to tell us about?
Do you have views about funerals and the funeral industry that you would like to share?
Would you like to make a donation?
Email us. Or ring. Our phone number is: 01527 595 358 / 07557 684 515.
We look forward to hearing from you.
The Good Funeral Guide is also a book. You can read reviews and buy it here.
Charles Cowling and Richard Honeysett